My TEDx Interlude

I mentioned I would be attending a conference this week. It was the TEDx conference at Pasadena’s Caltech. The animation above explains, kind of, why I don’t have a bunch of photos. I could leave it at that, but it is not really true. The fact is that in my haste to get ready for the event, I completely forgot to charge my phone battery – otherwise I certainly would have sneaked a few snapshots of the event. That won’t ever happen again!

By the way, I am referring to my new Android phone (HTC EVO) I am waiting for a good Android tablet now, too. This is a big deal, actually. I have been an Apple brand loyal new media creator for twenty years – since I began doing new media and digital art. I have “crossed over” for the first time. All the newspaper journalists I read keep wondering if Android users will jump to the iPhone now that Verizon is going to host it; why isn’t anyone talking about the Mac faithful who have left or ignored the iPhone and iPad platforms in favor of Android – since Jobs still refuses to host Flash? The Flash animations in my Amy Beach book and in this blog work fine on my Android. As I have mentioned, those of you reading this blog on iPhones or iPads are missing all the Flash. I make little simple animations like the one above in gif – in deference to all of you, but, it sure would be nice if all platforms allowed Flash. It does way more than HTML 5 – though Jobs and others continue to deny it.

I will have a great deal to talk about the TEDx conference! There is no hurry, since most the scientists who spoke yesterday are so far ahead of their time that a couple weeks delay in my reporting about them will hardly make any big cosmic difference. Next post I will, therefore, continue on about neuroscience and creativity. And I will figure out how to sprinkle TED comments as I go over the next weeks.

I must say that I was pretty much in heaven all day listening to a couple dozen scientists talk. I am adding a humanities class in the history of information and a couple of science classes (one on patterns and one on Internet science) to the curriculum of the private art college where I direct the web and interactive program. The lectures here at TEDx were quite inspirational and revelatory in light of my plans. One great thing about these courses I plan, too, is that I can design them, teach them myself to refine them, then hand them over to someone else to teach so I can create other new classes. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Oh, and little btw: Stephen Hawking made a guest appearance at the event yesterday. That was electrifying. Hawking is the only “star” I have ever waited in line to see. It was quite a few years back, and I waited for hours to hear him speak at an event in Santa Monica. I remember the wait wasn’t bad at all, though, because I was in line with a bunch of scientists who wanted to talk about interesting things.

A flurry of new registered users from Germany last week. Welcome. I guess we are really going global here now.